EEEC to remain all-kindergarten school

The Enterprise Early Education Center will remain an all-kindergarten school.

That was the decision Enterprise City Schools Superintendent Greg Faught announced at the Enterprise Board of Education meeting Sept. 26.

Whether the school systems’ kindergarten classes would be moved from the single-grade school building back into each of the city’s elementary schools was a question Faught brought to the table at the EBOE meeting Aug. 29.

At that meeting Faught said that comments from parents about transporting their children to multiple schools daily and concerns about moving students to a new school after their kindergarten year were among factors that prompted him to open the dialogue.

Including the kindergarteners in the same school with the other elementary grades helps school principals to see what they are doing over time is working, Faught said, adding that the kindergarten teachers are presently at a disadvantage because they do not have the opportunity to interact with first grade teachers on a regular basis.

Faught said that since the Aug. 29 board meeting, he had received a great deal of feedback on the subject. “I really appreciate the people who came and talked to me, sent me an email or gave me a telephone call and gave me an opportunity to hear them out,” Faught. “That was really important.

“Over the last month, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet with a lot of people who have had different opinions, to meet with all the first grade teachers and many of the teachers at the kindergarten center as well as community members, former school employees and current employees,” Faught said. “The idea was that I would look into this with an open mind, learn about it as much as I could and eventually make a decision based upon the information that we had.

“I want to make one thing exceedingly clear,” Faught said. “My mind was never made up from the beginning and I did exactly what I said I was going to do: listen to our people, give due consideration to all the issues that were brought to my attention and make the best possible decision.”

Faught said that he brought the issue of reconfiguring EEEC to the board in an open meeting “in an effort to be transparent and let everyone know that this is something that is being talked about.

“And rather than sneak around and try to get information, I wanted to be up front about it and let everyone know this is what I am looking at,” Faught told those attending the EBOE meeting. “This board put no pressure on me to do this, in fact I’m the one who brought it up to them.

“And there were no community members that put any pressure on me,” Faught said. “There were opinions shared— and there were strong opinions shared—but any kind of pressure was pressure I put upon myself because at the end of the day I felt like I had to make the best decision.”

Faught said that he would meet with the EEEC leadership to address issues that have arisen. “But I’ve decided that we need to give ourselves the opportunity to work through any inherent challenges that we’re currently facing on the level on which they are occurring,” he said. “And I think we owe each other that, the opportunity to work through those things and give it a shot.

“There are some adjustments that I do feel like need to be made but I feel like we can overcome those or at least we need to give ourselves a chance to overcome those through good communication, good planning and clear expectations,” Faught said. “I feel like all those things fall squarely on my shoulders and whether it works one way or the other, I take responsibility for that.”

“Have you been able to define the issues, the problem?” EBOE Member Bob Doerer asked Faught. “You must have brought (reconfiguring EEEC) up for a reason so….”

“Yes,” Faught replied. “Those are going to be discussed in more detail between me and their leadership team.”

“I just want to say that a lot of people reached out to me over their feelings one way or another,” said EBOE Member Reid Clark. “I can give assurance to the community that this board’s minds are not made up going in to something.

“(Faught) brought (reconfiguring EEEC) up at a work session. That was the first time we’ve really ever discussed it,” Clark said. “There are no backroom discussions on things. This board—or at least I can speak for me personally—will be transparent. “Any decisions that are made, this community will have input and they will know the decisions that are going on,” Clark said. “I know what has been done in the past but I feel confident that with this board everything will be done up front.”

“I echo what (Clark) said,” Doerer told those attending the meeting. “We will be open and transparent but we definitely will define the problem and find out the course of action (to correct it) whatever that may be.”

Faught thanked the board for their support, noting that transparency “comes with a price.

“People, in the absence of facts and while we’re trying to find them, will fill in the blanks on their own sometimes,” Faught said. “And many times they are not going to have good information and it’s important for us to make an allowance for that.

“I feel like it comes down to communications and understanding what the expectations are,” Faught said. “We will make the best decision that we can at the time and then give ourselves the opportunity to work together.”